White’s hybrid record label headquarters with signature bright yellow walls, retail store and live performance venue has doubled its Nashville footprint after taking over a mechanic shop next to its Seventh Avenue South home. White and company have added a shipping and distribution operation and plan to have more music shows and movie screenings.
And that leads to the restroom upgrade. One of the more inconvenient things about catching a show at Third Man had been lack of bathrooms, said co-founder Ben Swank, whose business card identifies him as the company’s consigliere, a title he readily admits he made up. Portable toilets were brought in for events and hauled out at night’s end.

Perhaps to save the new restrooms from being too practical for the business’s eccentric founder, an upside-down toilet is affixed to the men’s ceiling.

“A little bit of surrealism,” Swank said.

A new open-air patio with an area for grilling hot dogs was carved from a “dark, scary” alley and an auto parts storage area.

White founded Third Man Records as a record label in 2001 in Detroit. The former lead singer of The White Stripes and current member of bands The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather opened a physical headquarters in Nashville in March 2009.

There was no expectation that it would attract regular visitors, Swank said.

“We thought people would ring the bell every now and then to buy stuff and we’d be done,” Swank said. “But it just kind of snowballed.”

The staff has mushroomed from three employees to 15.

Friday morning brought a couple who went straight for the vinyl collection, which includes works produced by White. The retail store also sells T-shirts, guitar picks and oddities such as iPhone cases made from reclaimed vinyl.

The expansion of Third Man Records reinforces White’s love of vinyl records.

Beginning tonight, music performed in the Blue Room will be recorded and immediately mixed and mastered on site using a record-cutting lathe. Fans can watch the process as it happens by peering into a room where engineers wearing lab coats will be operating the machinery.

“We just wanted to take people back even more,” Swank said.

“Any flaws, any mistakes in the show, that’s what’s going to be available for fans,” Swank said. “It’s just sort of how Jack is. He always wants fans to experience something they’ve never experienced before.”